Women’s Board advocates youth mentorship to curb restiveness

Women’s Board, an educational cooperation society and a non-for-profit organisation, has called for improved mentorship and empowerment for young Nigerians to curb youth restiveness and vices in the society.

The Director, Mrs Edna Dafe, made the call during a briefing in Lagos on Wednesday tagged, ‘Project Grow; Dissemination Seminar on Youth Work: Impacts of Mentoring and Safeguarding’.

She said providing good influences and mentorship for youths would serve as a shield and guide against ills in society.

She said, “Project Grow (Growing and Resourcing Youth Organisation for women) is an EU-funded project aimed at giving young women the chance to access decent jobs, be leaders and create positive change in their communities and workplaces, gain transferrable skills and knowledge and access quality guidance and training.

“The programme aims to empower 1,000 young women from disadvantaged backgrounds, train youth workers and mentor them on skills and attitudes through volunteer and mentorship support by developing capacity building activities, interactive digital guides to increase the youth capacity.”

She advised youths to embrace parental mentorship and seek other mentors in their chosen field of studies or endeavour to become agents of positive change in the country.

She called on government to partner NGOs to carry out developmental projects in the nation rather than clamping down youths and their activities.

Expatiating on the need for mentorship, the Registrar, Wavecrest College of Hospitality, Veronica Esode, said nobody in the world would be successful without a mentor, stressing that mentorship was germane to building strong and healthy youths with the right mindset to take up responsible choices.

She described mentoring as a sustained and trusting relationship where an experienced person (the mentor) helps another person (the mentee) to achieve their life goals.

Esode said: “The increasing rate of moral decadence and vices among young people across Nigeria in recent times is an indication that many youths lack mentoring and direction hence, there is an urgent need for Nigeria to make conscious efforts towards mentoring to aid a better society.”

She advised mentors to maintain a high sense of integrity in the discharge of their duties and enhance their knowledge-skill gap in mentoring, career and artificial intelligence to stand out and produce the best.

The programme is an EU-funded project with the aim of strengthening a network of five like-minded NGOs in Europe and Africa to become change agents in the areas of work and family and to develop capacity-building activities, and interactive digital guides to increase the capacity of young organisations working with youth.